Munisamy Gopinath, Professor, Dept of Agricultural & Resource Economics, Oregon State University 14th March-15th March 2008, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington D.C.

1. Improving WTO Transparency
India’s Shadow Farm Support
Notifications
Munisamy Gopinath
Professor
Dept of Agricultural & Resource Economics
Oregon State University
March 13, 2007
IFPRI, Washington DC

2. India’s Farm Support Policies
• Market access
• Export competition/subsidies
• Domestic support
– Market price support
– Input subsidies

3. Official Domestic Support
Notifications
• 1995-1997
• Four categories of support
– Green box (DS1)
• Stockholding for food security
• Relief payments for natural calamities including
crop insurance
– Special and Differential Treatment (DS2)
• Investment subsidies
• Input subsidies for low-income and resource-poor
producers

4. Official Domestic Support
Notifications (contd)
– Product-specific AMS (DS4, 5 & 7)
• 1986-88 ERP (net importer for rice, wheat,
rapeseed, pulses and sugar and exporter for
others)
• Minimum support price announced for 26
commodity lines
– Non-product-specific AMS (DS9)
• Fertilizer, irrigation, electricity, credit and seed
subsidies

6. Domestic Support Classification
and Measurement
• Green box
– Budgetary outlays or expenditures from the
Ministry of Agriculture
• general services (research)
• environmental payments
• structural adjustment through investment aids
• payments for relief from natural disasters
• public stockholding
– About 3.5% of value of production in 1997

7. Support Classification and
Measurement (contd)
• Special and Differential Treatment
– Investment subsidies
• 1995: small
• 1996 & 1997: Rural development budget is included, but the
share of expenditure or programs included are not identified
– Input subsidies to low-income or resource-poor
producers
• Small items like specialty product support
• 80% of the fertilizer, irrigation and electricity subsidies is
included since the share of farms with less than 2 hecatres of
cultivated land is equal to that percentage.
• More on input subsidy data & measurement under DS9

8. Support Classification and
Measurement (contd)
• Non-product-specific AMS
– Fertilizer subsidy
• Total budgetary subsidies in 1995, but for 1996 and 1997 the
monetary value is allocated to fertilizer industry and farmers
• Share of industry in budgetary subsidies is based on Gulati
and Narayanan (2003) approach. Retention price scheme. If
import price is below the fixed sales price for each
manufacturing unit, then the industry is also subsidized.
– Irrigation subsidy
• Hoda and Gulati (2007) claim that it is the operating
expenditure of minor irrigation projects after subtracting fee
receipts. The corresponding budgetary item is very small.
The closest we got to notified support is when using 20% of
the budget of Ministry of Water Resources

9. Support Classification and
Measurement (contd)
• Product-specific AMS
– Formula: (MSP-ERP) X Quantity
– ERP (1986-88 average)
– MSP, announced annually at the national level
(spatial differences and weighting ignored) –
Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Ministry of
Agriculture
– Two options for Q: total vs eligible production
• Total production
• Eligible production – procurement of paddy, rice, wheat and
coarse cereals only since 1996

10. Support Classification and
Measurement (contd)
• Non-product-specific AMS
– Electricity subsidy
• 20% of subvention received by all states reported in a report
on State Electricity Boards by the Planning Commission
– Credit subsidy
• Small for 1995, none for 1996 and 1997. Appears
consistent with the federal expenditure on loan waivers.
However, interest rate gap on short, medium and long-term
loans and their value to farmers has not been computed
(nowhere in government documents – banking sector?)
– Seed subsidy
• National and state seed labs testing, certification and free
disbursement especially for low-income and resource-poor
farmers

11. Shadow Notifications
• 1998-2005
• Preliminary support estimates for 2006-
2007
• Projection for 2013

12. Shadow Notifications 1998-2005
• Green box
– Total support increased from about $3 billion
to $7.7 billion between 1997 and 2005 (share
in value of production increased from 3.5 to
6.7% during the same time)
– Two items have grown by over 10% per year
• Payments for relief from natural disasters
quadrupled (includes crop insurance)
• Public stockholding expenditure nearly tripled

13. Shadow Notifications 1998-2005
• Special and differential treatment
– $5.2 billion in 1997, but has increased to
about $6.9 billion in 2004. Preliminary
estimates for 2005 suggest expenditure may
be as high as $9.5 billion
– Share in value of production has stayed within
6-7% during 1998-2004
– Fairly confident about other input subsidies,
but investment subsidies has been a mystery

14. Shadow Notifications 1998-2005
• Product-specific AMS
– Following the same method as in the 1997
notification shows that product-specific
remains negative for rice and wheat. Coarse
cereals’ procurement data recently became
available and quantity appears to be relatively
small.
– Considerable narrowing of the gap between
MSP and ERP. Nominally, price gap is likely
to turn positive in the next few years.

15. Shadow Notifications 1998-2005
• Non-product-specific AMS
– No reported credit subsidies during the shadow
notification period
– Seed subsidies considered to be fully exempt (DS2)
– Fertilizer subsidy remains effective for nitrogenous
fertilizer, but new concessions for phosphatic
fertilizers have considerably increased. As a result,
reductions in the former are offset by the latter with
level of notified support in 2005 about the same as in
1997 (~$500 million).

16. Shadow Notifications 1998-2005
• Non-product-specific AMS
– Electricity subsidies increased from $342 to
$522 million from 1998 to 2005
– Irrigation subsidies, which we haven’t fully
figured out, averaged about $127 million in
the shadow notification period

17. Table 4: Summary of India’s Shadow Farm Support Notifications
Component 1997-98* 1998-99 1999-00 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06
Green Box Payments (DS1)
General Services 236.1 270.4 354.5 325.2 308.7 319.1 368.7 402.7 470.2
Public Stockholding for Food Security 2176.0 2214.1 2243.3 2708.7 3741.2 4429.3 5534.3 5817.5 5328.0
Payments for Relief from Natural Disasters 426.0 378.6 412.6 492.2 852.3 708.2 896.8 995.6 1679.8
DS1 Total 2955.0 2978.7 3124.0 3650.8 5009.3 5589.9 6964.0 7387.8 7689.3
Special and Differential Treatment (DS2)
Investments Subsidies to Agriculture 1142.5 601.4 1734.8 2027.1 1930.2 2122.3 2235.0 2545.6 5006.4**
Input Subsidies to Low Income or Resource 4013.6 3956.1 3584.3 3290.5 3049.8 3754.3 3848.2 4311.6 4466.6
Poor Producers
**
DS2 Total 5171.8 4557.5 5319.1 5317.6 4980.0 5876.6 6083.2 6857.2 9473.0
Product Specific AMS (DS4, 5 and 7)
Rice -1480.0 -1330.9 -1690.4 -2024.4 -2117.4 -1509.7 -1891.6 -1866.1 -1921.7
Wheat -1178.8 -1692.5 -1835.0 -2139.6 -2760.3 -2542.9 -2004.9 -2042.1 -1734.2
Coarse cereals -2.8 - - - - - - - -
DS4, 5 and 7 Total -2661.6 -3023.4 -3525.5 -4163.9 -4877.6 -4052.6 -3896.6 -3908.3 -4183.2
Non-Product Specific AMS (DS9)
Fertilizer Subsidy 515.9 417.5 282.5 388.1 260.5 257.1 319.0 444.1 483.5
Credit Subsidy - - - - - - - - -
Subsidy on Electricity 342.6 492.1 519.9 326.9 364.0 537.0 482.3 466.4 522.3
Irrigation Subsidy 144.9 79.5 93.6 107.6 137.9 144.4 160.7 167.3 110.8
Subsidy on Average Supply of Seeds 0.1 - - - - - - - -
DS9 Total 1003.5 989.0 896.1 822.6 762.4 938.6 962.1 1077.9 1116.7
Non-Product Specific AMS as % of Value 1.2 1.1 1.0 1.0 0.9 1.1 1.0 1.0 1.0
of Production
Value of Agricultural Production (Mil. $) 84973 91329 88799 82905 88502 83561 100682 105663 115419

18. Alternative Domestic Support-
Definition and Measurement
Scenarios
• Green box
– Can a part of public stockholding become
product- or non-product-specific AMS?
• Special and differential treatment
– Targeting of input subsidies
– Apportioning between DS2 and DS9

19. Alternative Domestic Support-
Definition and Measurement
Scenarios
• Product-specific AMS
– Errors in MSP as well as ERP
– Eligible versus total production
– Shadow exchange rate
– Nominal versus real MSP

20. Alternative Domestic Support-
Definition and Measurement
Scenarios
• Non-product-specific AMS
– Box shifting (from DS9 to DS2)
– Computation of fertilizer subsidy is different
from that of irrigation or electricity

21. Preliminary Estimates for 2006 and
2007
• Public stockholding projected to grow
– Stockholding capacity (40 mil tons)
– MSP goes up, but prices for urban consumers may
not go up as much
• Modest increases in DS2, less clarity on
investment subsidies
• Product-specific AMS turns positive with nominal
MSP
• Non-product-specific AMS’ share in value of
production remains constant (near 1%)
• Projection for 2013

22. Table 9: Projections of India’s Product- and Non-Product-Specific AMS, 2006 and Beyond
2006-07 2007-08 2013-14* 2013-14*
(a) (b)
Mil. $
Green Box (DS1) 8624 9673 19258
Public Stockholding for Food 5957 6660 13004**
Security
Special and Differential Treatment 4557 4649 5243
(DS2): Other Input Subsidies***
Product-Specific AMS (DS4-5-7) -2038 95 3741 -773.5
Non-Product-Specific AMS (DS9) 1150 1184 1415
10% of Value of Agricultural 11930 12331 15038
Production (de minimis)

23. Implications of Proposed Doha
Modalities
• No restraint on green box or special and
differential treatment
• Product-specific AMS turns positive with nominal
MSP and can breach the de minimis level if total
production is used. Even with real prices, MSPs
are likely to exceed ERP by 2015 or 2016
• Proposed credit subsidies and whether they fit in
DS2 or DS9
• De minimis exemptions vary between $23 and
$30 billion depending on the growth of value of
agricultural production

24. India’s Strategy in the Doha Round
• Offense versus defense, more of the former
• Enough slack in de minimis
• Given the price boom, and increase in tax
compliance (revenues), the de minimis
exemptions provide an excellent opportunity to
move away from trade distorting support
– Logistical difficulties
– Political will